My dear sister Madina, In the sky’s clear embrace today, A melody echoes in a long, soft way. Thank you, dear teacher, for all that you gave, For sharing your knowledge, so wise and so brave.
This world is flawed without you, my guide, In subjects so needed, you walked by my side. Because of you, I’ve come this far, Turning the pages of books full of stars.
You showed me myself, took me by the hand, Even when I strayed, you’d patiently stand. For me, you’ve given your everything whole, Enduring the burdens, like my mother’s soul.
My teacher, my father, so grand in your grace, I sing out your praises, with rhythm I chase. Madina, my teacher, you’re the best there could be, My spring in full bloom, you’re the summer to me.
With you here, I smile and live without fear, One day, I’ll be just like you, that is clear. The world will look on, admiring us both, I’ll pave the ground with flowers, to show you my oath.
In my heart, you’ll stay cherished forever, From you, I’ll take lessons, growing more clever. My being and soul are alive by your grace, Each time I see you, my heart starts to race.
Grateful am I for you, my dear guide, Let my voice soar to the heavens, far and wide. Your name, I’ll make into a tale of my own, Each time I see you, joy brightly is shown.
Madina, my world, you light up my skies, Like the lovely basil by the water lies, With you, every moment of life is so sweet, Stay well, dear teacher, my heart skips a beat.
I am Sobirjonova Rayhona, a 10th-grade student at the 8th General Secondary School in Vobkent district, Bukhara region. I was born in December 2008 in Chorikalon village, Vobkent district, into an educated family.
Christopher Bernard will be reading at the Poets for Palestine SF Marathon Reading at San Francisco’s Bird and Beckett Bookstore. For a donation of any amount to the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a nonpartisan and nonpolitical organization helping all children in the region, poets can come and read at any time at the store on October 14th, Indigenous People’s Day. Please feel welcome to sign up here or email poetsforpalestinesf@gmail.com to be scheduled.
This month’s issue addresses our fears and aspirations: whether life will become what we dread, or what we hope.
Wazed Abdullah revels in the joy of the Bangladesh monsoon as Don Bormon celebrates flowers and wispy clouds in autumn. Maurizio Brancaleoni contributes bilingual haiku spotlighting days at the beach, insects, cats, and the rain. Brian Barbeito shares the experience of walking his dogs as summer turns to fall.
Soren Sorensen probes and stylizes sunsets in his photography series. Lan Qyqualla rhapsodizes about love, dreams, flowers, colors, poetry, and harp music. Ilhomova Mohichehra poetically welcomes autumn to her land.
John L. Waters reviews Brian Barbeito’s collection of poetry and photography Still Some Summer Wind Coming Through, pointing out how it showcases nature and the “subtle otherworldly” within seemingly ordinary scenes. Oz Hartwick finds a bit of the otherworldly within his ordinary vignettes as he shifts his perspective.
Kelly Moyer crafts stylized photographic closeups of ordinary scenes, rendering the familiar extraordinary. Ma Yongbo paints scenes where ordinary life becomes unreal, suffused with images associated with horror.
Sayani Mukherjee speaks of a bird’s sudden descent into a field of flowers and comments on our wildness beneath the surface. Jake Cosmos Aller illustrates physical attraction literally driving a person wild.
Mesfakus Salahin asserts that were the whole natural world to become silent, his love would continue. Mahbub Alam views life as a continual journey towards his beloved. Tuliyeva Sarvinoz writes tenderly of a mother and her young son and of the snow as a beloved preparing for her lover. Sevinch Tirkasheva speaks of young love and a connection that goes deeper than looks. llhomova Mohichehra offers up tender words for each of her family members. She also expresses a kind tribute to a classmate and friend.
Meanwhile, rather than describing tender loving affection, Mykyta Ryzhykh gets in your face with his pieces on war and physical and sexual abuse. His work speaks to the times when life seems to be an obscenity. Z.I. Mahmud looks at William Butler Yeats’ horror-esque poem The Second Coming through the lens of Yeats’ contemporary and tumultuous European political situation.
Alexander Kabishev’s next tale of life during the blockade of St. Petersburg horrifies with its domestic brutality. Almustapha Umar weeps with grief over the situations of others in his country.
In a switch back to thoughts of hope, Lidia Popa speaks to the power of poetry and language to connect people across social divides. Hari Lamba asserts his vision for a more just and equal America with better care for climate and ecology. Perizyat Azerbayeva highlights drip irrigation as a method to tackle the global problem of a shortage of clean drinkable water. Eldorbek Xotamov explores roles for technology and artificial intelligence in education.
Elmaya Jabbarova expresses her hopes for compassion and peace in our world. Eva Petropoulou affirms that action, not mere pretty words, are needed to heal our world.
Ahmad Al-Khatat’s story illustrates the healing power of intimate love after the trauma of surviving war and displacement. Graciela Noemi Villaverde reflects on the healing calm of silence after war.
Meanwhile, Christopher Bernard showcases the inhumanity of modern warfare in a story that reads at first glance like a sci-fi dystopia. Daniel De Culla also calls out the absurdity of war and the grossness of humor in the face of brutality.
Pat Doyne probes the roots of anti-Haitian immigrant rumors in Springfield, Ohio and critiques fear-mongering. Jorabayeva Ezoza Otkir looks to nature for metaphors on the corrosive nature of hate.
On a personal level, Nosirova Gavhar dramatizes various human responses to loss and trauma. Kendall Snipper dramatizes an eating disorder ravaging a woman’s life and body.
Donna Dallas’ characters are lonely, bruised by life, and drawn to what’s not good for them: drugs, bad relationships, lovers who don’t share their dreams. J.J. Campbell evokes his miserable life situation with dark humor.
Meanwhile, Maja Milojkovic savors each moment as she creates her own happiness through a positive attitude. In the same vein, Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa celebrates the power of a free and self-confident mind and the joy of spending time with small children.
Tuliyeva Sarvinoz urges us to move forward toward our goals with faith and dedication. Numonjonova Shahnozakhon echoes that sentiment, encouraging perseverance and resilience. S. Afrose resolves to move forward in life with optimism and self-respect.
Michael Robinson reflects on the peace he finds in his continuing Christian walk. Federico Wardal reviews anthropologist Claudia Costa’s research into spiritual fasting practices among the Yawanawa tribe in Brazil.
Duane Vorhees explores questions of legacy, inheritance, and immortality, both seriously and with humor. Isabel Gomes de Diego highlights Spanish nature and culture with her photographic closeups of flowers, religious icons, and a drawing made as a gift for a child’s parents. Federico Wardal highlights the archaeological findings of Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass and his upcoming return to San Francisco’s De Young Museum. Zarina Bo’riyeva describes the history and cultural value of Samarkand.
Sarvinoz Mansurova sends outlines from a conference she attended on Turkic-adjacent cultures, exploring her region as well as her own Uzbek culture.
Barchinoy Jumaboyeva describes her affection for her native Uzbekistan, viewing the country as a spiritual parent. Deepika Singh explores the mother-daughter relationship in India and universally through her dialogue poem.
David Sapp’s short story captures the feel of decades-ago Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday as it describes a dream meeting between lovers in Rome. Mickey Corrigan renders the escapades and tragedies of historical women writers into poetry.
Duane Vorhees draws a parallel between Whitman’s detractors and those who would criticize Jacques Fleury’s poetry collection You Are Enough: The Journey To Accepting Your Authentic Self for having a non-traditional style.
This set of poems from Jacques Fleury expresses a sophisticated childlike whimsy. A few other pieces carry a sense of wry humor. Daniel De Culla relates a tale of inadvertently obtaining something useful through an email scam. Taylor Dibbert reflects on our escapes and “guilty pleasures.”
Noah Berlatsky reflects on both his progress as a poet and editors’ changing tastes. Sometimes it takes growing and maturing over time as a person to create more thoughtful craft.
Alan Catlin strips artworks down to their bare essential elements in his list poetry, drawing attention to main themes. Mark Young focuses on kernels of experience, on the core of what matters in the moment. J.D. Nelson captures sights, experiences, and thoughts into evocative monostich poems worthy of another reading.
Kylian Cubilla Gomez’ pictures get close up to everyday miracles: a beetle, car components, action figures, a boy in a dinosaur costume.
We hope that this issue, while being open about the worries we face, is also a source of everyday miracles and thought-provoking ideas. Enjoy!
Scribbles
[Written at a Boston-based writing group and included in Fleury's book "You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self"]
La vie
Ah, la douleur de la vie;
So sorrowful this life can be,
We live in a constant that is uncertainty,
Waiting to awaken each morning can be tiresome,
Waking from a nightmare can be winsome,
‘Til we see the dreadful daylight of reality!
Yearning to sleep;
Daring to wake;
What comes next?
Life is but a haste!
Bird Bath
The mockingbird emerged from its bath,
Singing while it sat on a raft,
Looking into the distant path,
And poised with some sass,
Swiftly flew off in a fit of wrath!
Insomnia
I dreamed I had insomnia
And birds of prey roamed
‘Round my sphere
My heart rhythm’s tachycardia
Abided in a bed of fear...
I dreamt I slept with insomnia
echoes of children
Resounded like nostalgia
My senses somewhat forlorn
Yearning for the years bygone
Wishing to wish away my melancholia
I dream of sleep
Awake I weep
I dreamt i prayed
My soul to keep
I fell asleep
Or so it seems
Wishing to weep
For my esteem
Alas to sleep
Perchance to dream...
What Place is This?
Surrounded by a shadowy grey environ,
Sitting cross-legged on some ground,
Looking up in a circular motion,
I wondered why there was no one else around...
Yearning to hear a sound;
Something has blurred my vision,
Suddenly I hear a pound,
Could thunder be a thing I found?!
Alas...The dawning of my wakening,
I am living in a cloud!!!
Jacques Stanley Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Author and Educator. He holds an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts and is currently pursuing graduate studies in the literary arts at Harvard University online. Once on the editing staff of The Watermark, a literary magazine at the University of Massachusetts, his first book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir was featured in and endorsed by the Boston Globe. His second book: It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories is a collection of short fictional stories dealing with the human condition as the characters navigate life’s foibles and was featured on Good Reads. His current book and hitherto magnum opus Chain Letter to America: The One Thing You Can Do to End Racism, A Collection of Essays, Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Multiculturalism explores social justice in America and his latest book, “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” along with all other previously mentioned titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, The Grolier Bookshop, Goodreads, bookshop, Amazon etc… His CD A Lighter Shade of Blue as a lyrics writer in collaboration with the neo-folk musical group Sweet Wednesday is available on Amazon, iTunes & Spotify to benefit Haitian charity St. Boniface.
loom outside the darkness, lingering off the road.
I encounter ghosts in the mirror,
the wind sniffs beneath fallen leaves, through a door-crack,
scenting the faint glow of flesh revealed.
Axes, slingshots, cleavers all line the window sill painted blue,
even my stiff six-year-old elbows bear the grain of wood.
The yard’s pale wooden gate is locked, the door to the cottage too,
I stare at every tremble of the wooden gate
and the passing sound of the whistling poplar trees.
Mother hasn’t returned yet, I don’t know how many years
how many winters have passed, I hear the door handle softly turning,
the quiet voices of family members, and the slow movement of a golden lamp.
But I can’t wake up, can’t bolt that door wrapped in a sack.
A Near-Forgotten Craft
Destruction is space, allowing new horrors to emerge
yellowed pages can no longer be turned
invisible ghosts make you cough incessantly
the painted landscape keeps shrinking
until real places become indistinguishable:
a century-old iron bridge as dark as a bagpipe
now creaks like a knee by the water’s edge.
Punish life by writing everything down
let the sunset hover forever in a still cave.
As long as this book is opened once
everyone will be resurrected, the precise machinery of hell
will start again, with wild winds, hail, and flames
with the asphalt stiffening their joints, the suffering of others continues
unbeknown to anyone.
Reliant on the reader’s sympathy and testimony
time continues like dashed lines in the snow.
Snow falls, falling forever,
yet never falling on the bent heads of pedestrians
always walking in the same place, never avoiding a snowfall.
Few believe in these kinds of games anymore.
Perhaps it’s just a harmless game
which offers us the image of time
like a watchmaker with weak eyesight in his workshop,
where metal parts and various-sized gears reflect the dusk light
through the carved glass revolving door, candlelight, flickers
at the door, an unidentified white horse appears
snorting with contempt, carrying the decay of generations.
Encounter with a Cat on Midnight Streets
You lay sprawled in the centre of the street, eyes half-open.
Poor little thing, what happened to you?
Your gaze seems to ask me, what is life?
I had just returned from a meeting discussing the meaning of life,
drunk on wine because life is so beautiful,
though the discussion was dull, led by zombies.
I never expected to meet you like this,
“Death” lying on the path I, “Life,” must take.
As if questioning me, unknown death, how to understand life.
The midnight street suddenly falls silent, and I hesitate for a moment,
thinking to find a branch to move your flattened body to the roadside,
where passing cars will crush it repeatedly,
until your emaciated pain is swept away by the sun’s custodian,
or it becomes a golden beehive, dripping with blood honey.
But in the end, I did nothing, exchanging a meaningful gaze with you.
I turn away, like a soul leaving its shell.
“Here”
“Here” is a signpost, not really here,
the earth beneath your feet is a vertical, transparent void,
you can only recognize here by its “non-existence”.
You’re familiar with these signs, a street, a road,the house behind houses,
a date, a name, the sound of poplar leaves brushing each other,
and songs from the last century playing on a radio hanging from a branch.
You can no longer make out their lyrics,
as if they’ve been encrypted at the far end of time,
that’s fine—no words to smudge this perfect balm,
no other you, old, young, or in between,
walking out of this maze of “here”,
to watch a sunset elsewhere,
or see another autumn rain falling in another realm,
another of you, nose buried in a colour-blurred map,
collar wore the wrong way round, searching for a “here” you’ve been before.
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, Since 1986 He has published over eighty original works and translations. He is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Literature, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. His studies center around Chinese and Western modern poetics, post-modern literature, and eco-criticism. His translations from English include works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, W.C.Williams, John Ashbery, Henry James, Herman Melville, May Sarton and others.
Ancient Egypt: Zahi Hawass and the True Face of the Golden Masks
Prof. Zahi Hawass is the world’s most famous archaeologist and has been active for decades in bringing to light sensational discoveries about ancient Egypt that illuminate the modern world with knowledge.
The archaeological mechanism works that from one discovery you access another and so on and so it is happening regarding the latest discovery of Prof. Hawass: the “Lost Golden City” in Luxor, the most important discovery of 2021, as Daily News Egypt writes.
Over the millennia, the sand of the Egyptian desert has covered archaeological treasures, but ancient Egypt itself must be explored through an immense maze of secret underground passages. It is as if an immense golden mask, which would represent death, covers and watches over the secrets of life that rejoins death, in a flow that challenges immortality.
The United States wants Zahi Hawass back and he will be returning to the US and Canada in the spring of 2025 with his very interesting lectures that will widely reveal in detail the most sensational latest discoveries of the mysterious ancient Egypt.
Fall
A partly frisky fall, a lonely jump
Across the plane
A watershed benchmark
Full of throttled wishes
The macabre knew what to do with anxiety
Your face a full flanked rose garden
Tattooed in Australia, knows what to do
Coming over a backfired cameo at the end
Why is that blue flower so small?
I floated friskly at the fall garden
Silencing the primary force
For all at once I swamed a whole gypsy plane.
Guilty Pleasure
He’s watching
The latest season
Of “Selling Sunset”
On Netflix,
One of
His many
Guilty pleasures.
Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fifth book, was published in May.
